Buried in an article on The Block Island Times website about school budgets is this section on homeschooling:

Home-schooling requests

A policy developed last year requires parents who seek to keep their children out of school for more than six consecutive days to apply to home-school them.

Hicks noted he has received a number of such requests.

McGarry asked Hicks if he approved of the policy, and Hicks acknowledged that initially he was skeptical about it. However, he said that he came to understand the need for parents to take vacations during the school year because they must work throughout the summer season. The policy began to make more sense to him, he said, because “it forces families to come and see the superintendent and the teachers and to think seriously about the academic program.”

He submitted requests from three families: the first was from Gail and Jeff Ballard for home-schooling of their child from February 3 to 12; the second from Kate and Shea Butcher to home-school their children from February 1 to February 12, and the last was from Jennifer Brady Brown to receive permission to home-school her child for two days running up to the February vacation. All requests were approved.

It may be accurate, given the Iowa’s “home-school assistance programs” to call tis homeschooling but it is a problematic use of the term ‘homeschool’. Yet, there it is, schools being sensitive to the needs of families. Good for school families, bad for blurring the lines between homeschooling and public school.

A lot of issues come to the fore in this piece, which as I read, is at the top of the site’s “Most Viewed Stories” list ahead of ISU beating Nebraska, a plane crash, and a shooting of a mountain lion. That is interesting in itself.

Some excerpts from the piece that caught my eye:

Legislative leaders created “home-school assistance programs” two decades ago to keep the government’s foot in the door of what was then a controversial form of education.

Most of Iowa’s estimated 30,000 home-schooled students do not want the help. They believe the government has no place in their schools. But nearly 5,000 parents, including Fidei’s mother, appreciate the assistance.

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“I think some people mistakenly think if there are no home-school assistance programs these children would come back to public schools, and that’s just not true,” said Mid-Prairie Superintendent Mark Schneider.

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Home-schooled students who receive taxpayer support are not required to take standardized tests, like their public school counterparts.

The children also are not considered public school students in the eyes of the law, which sets Iowa apart from other states.

“We believe that home-schooling works best when parents are truly in charge,” [Scott] Woodruff said. “The defect of the home-school assistance program is that the public school is, in fact, in charge.”

That distinction has driven a wedge between Iowa’s “public” home-schoolers and their private counterparts.